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Practical philosophy
What is a spiritual exercise?
A handy guide to the theory and practice of philosophical exercises from the Greco-Roman tradition
I have been practicing philosophy for a number of years now. No, that’s not an oxymoron, and no, I don’t just mean that I’ve been teaching philosophy at a university and publishing specialized academic papers (though I’ve been doing that too, it’s my job). I mean I have been practicing philosophy as a way of life. Like the Stoics, Epicureans, and Cynics did (well, not quite like the Cynics, no hugging marble statues in the middle of winter for me!). Or like Buddhists, Taoists, and Christians are still doing today.
A big part of such practice is my regular engaging in a series of “spiritual” exercises. But what, exactly, is a spiritual exercise? What is it for? How does one do it? And why do we use the word “spiritual” in this context?
The term “spiritual exercise” is perhaps most famously linked to Ignatius of Loyola, the 16th century founder of the Jesuit sect. His Exercitia Spiritualia, composed between 1522 and 1524, are a set of Christian meditations, including prayers and contemplation exercises. But Ignatius was by far not the first one in the western tradition to come up with such practices. In fact, he got the…
